Chapter IV (2)

How my heart’s chords
Vibrate as I recall them! ’Twas about
The third year’s close; and we were sitting out
Upon our terrace looking on the sea
At Thyna, after sundown. Purposely,
As I now fancy, Strongclyffe had led on
Our idle talk to what might yet be won
Back by mankind, of the great wreck we call
Antiquity; and then we talked of all
That splendid half of antique art which must
From the materials used have turned to dust
Almost as soon as did the artist’s hands.
Where be thy works, Apelles? where now stands,
Phidias, thy gold and ivory gems, renowned
Through the broad world? and where stands she who owned
As her fit seat the new-born Parthenon,
Thy gold and ivory Pallas? What would man
Not give to-day if only he could scan
In one short glimpse the splendour of that shape
Which Fancy’s restorations vainly ape,
If he for one short minute could behold
That ivory face, that drapery of gold
As Phidias modelled it?

“And yet,” I said,
“That Art was not so frail; for I have read
That that same effigy of Pallas, spared
From age to age, existed unimpaired
Till the Crusaders, under Baldwin, took
And sacked Constantinople.”

A strange look
Flashed out from Strongclyffe’s eyes. “There is no truth
In that old tale,” he answered; “and Time’s tooth
Still spared the statue when it many a year
Had gnawed the bones of Baldwin in his bier,
Ay, and of Baldwin’s sons.”

“How know you that?”
I asked.

He left the bench on which we sat,
And with a strange excitement he began
To pace the terrace. “I am not the man,”
He cried, “to make rash statements; yet I say
Deliberately, Percy, that to-day
That Pallas still exists. Oh, Earth has still
Surprises for mankind; and with God’s will
And patient work, the world shall see her yet!
Think not that I am mad: wait till I set
My proofs before your eyes. When you behold
The text in John Ionides, the old
Byzantine Chronicler, which had defied
All guesses to this day, and by its side
A certain passage in the life of Paul
Of Trebizond--and when you’ve counted all
The links of evidence which year by year
I have augmented both at home and here,
Until I now have found the very spot--
Then call me mad. ’Tis years since I have got
The certainty that long ere Baldwin’s sack
The Emperor, in fear of some attack
Upon the palace, had her safe conveyed
By vessel to a distance, and (by aid
Of trusty workmen) carefully concealed
In crypts beneath a temple. Nought revealed
The secret at the time; the Emperor died
Soon after; and, none caring to unhide
The statue, men forgot her. But where lay
The temple--or the ruins which to-day
No doubt replace it? Here I seemed to lose
My way and reach mere nothing. All my clues
Led to one spot--Thelopis; and that spot,
In spite of all my search, I found it not.
Oh, with what patience in these three long years
Have I not sought! Oh, with what hopes and fears
Have I not searched the present and the past
To find that place Thelopis! And at last
I have found out. Thelopis was a town,
If town it could be called, that was burnt down
Ten centuries ago, and where has grown
The present village Thos--the place that is
Nearest the temple of Peripolis:
The temple is Peripolis. And see,
The distance and direction both agree:
The passage says, ‘a five days’ eastward sail,
And then three days of road.’ No clues now fail;
There under Peripolis, girt round
By solitude and silence, will be found
The gold and ivory Pallas. Oh, I know
That you will answer that she long ago
Must have become mere shapeless mouldering dust--
That after seven centuries she must
Have blent with earth; and yet I say she stands
As grand and splendid as when all Greek lands
First hailed her beauty! Do you think that they
Who used such pains, in safety to convey
And hide her in that distant spot, would spare
The slight pains needed to exclude the air
And ward away the damp? Again I say
She lives--she lives!”

And so the following day
We started for Peripolis--a long
And arduous journey; for it lies among
Wild unfrequented mountains, in a small
And fever-stricken plain. The hills are all
Possessed by tribes which, though uncouth and wild,
Are not unfriendly. When you once have toiled
Through the last defiles, and behold the lone
Still distant ruins below you, that seem thrown
There to die slow, like those whom in its haste
A routed host abandons in the waste,
There creeps across your soul a sort of fear,
A sense of isolation such as ne’er
Has filled your heart. The broken columns throw
Their shadows on bare shingle; nought will grow
For miles around save thin scorched grass that feeds
A few lean goats, and some few clumps of reeds
Where there is water. Oh, the tract around
Speaks utter desolation; and we found
The task not easy even to collect
The workmen we required. The heaps of wrecked
And weed-grown marble where the spade was tried
Had more than once been searched, and seemed to hide
Nought worth men’s pains--at most some shattered bit
Of Greco-Roman sculpture; but we lit
On some strange crypts; and in a few more days
We had discovered a bewildering maze
Of subterranean chambers, large and small,
And catacomb-like passages, which all
Were cut in soft dry stone, and stretched away
Far underground, beyond the ruins that lay
In the sun’s light; and all were wholly bare.
Strongclyffe at once, pretending not to care
For empty crypts, employed the men elsewhere;
While he and I, by torch-light and alone,
Explored the maze. But sometimes, as loose stone
Obstructed here and there the way, we had
A boy to help--a dull half-witted lad
Of whom we felt no fear. For days we sought
With boundless care, but all our searching brought
Nothing to light; we sounded every wall,
We grew familiar with each inch of all
The lonely crypts; and even Strongclyffe seemed
To grow depressed. But suddenly there gleamed
Fresh ardour in his eyes: “Look there!” he said,
And showed me something like an arrow’s head
Cut in the wall; a small, scarce visible mark
Which led to others like it through the dark
Perplexing crypt; and where the last marks were
We scrutinized the wall with greater care,
And found its surface rougher, as if there
It had been tampered with. “This is the spot,”
He whispered. “She is here;” and having got
A pick, he struck. And as, beneath the stroke
Of Vulcan’s hammer once, the aching brow
Of Zeus was cleft for Pallas’ birth, so now
The stricken cloven stone exposed to sight
The long-sought Goddess; and the flickering light
Of the red torch flashed in a tremulous flood
Upon her golden breastplate as she stood
Intact, in all the glory and the glow
Of her incomparable beauty.

So
Was she discovered; I must now compel
My weak and miserable self to tell
How she was lost. There was no time to lose,
And we agreed, or rather Strongclyffe chose
That he should start at once for the chief town
Of that wild province, as he long had known
The there commanding Pasha, to obtain
A guard of men; while I was to remain
To watch the workmen. He was to be back
Within three days. Alas! I had no lack
Of buoyant thoughts at first; my soul was filled
With our immense success; my nerves still thrilled
With triumph and delight; and the first day
Of Strongclyffe’s absence lightly passed away.
The men worked on as usual, and my mind
Conceived no fear. But when the sun declined
There crept across my spirit, with the tide
Of slowly creeping shadow as day died,
A vague uneasiness; and my hands felt
For the revolver hanging at my belt,
I thought; and I remembered that when we
Had found the prize, we were not two but three.
The boy had seen the whole; and though I knew
That he was dull of wit and had no clue
To find the spot again in that vast maze
Of hidden crypts and subterranean ways,
I wished he had not seen. The men had gone
Back to their distant huts. I sat alone
Upon a broken column; one by one
The large stars twinkled forth from out the blue;
The shattered standing columns dusky grew,
And very solemn; and the wakening bat
Began to flit around me. As I sat,
I thought of Strongclyffe’s generosity;
How he had said ere setting out that I,
His faithful friend, must have an equal share
In the world’s praise; that it would not be fair
That I----

O God!

I gave a strangled shout
And fell, dragged backwards by a noose about
My throat. Three men were kneeling on my chest
Binding me tight with cords, while others pressed
All round about me, uttering no sound
As if all dumb. When I was firmly bound
All save my feet, which, purposely let loose
To let me walk, were in a running noose,
One of the men addressed me: “Listen well
To what I say,” he said. “If you rebel
We take your life; and none can help you now.
We have no wish to harm you; but we know
That you have found a treasure, and have got
The clue. Lead on.”

“I understand you not,”
I said.
He took a pistol from his sash
And held it at my ear. “Come, be not rash,”
He said, “but lead the way.” Oh, would to God
That he had fired! But though like a mere clod
I still moved not, he did not fire, but placed
Once more the gleaming pistol in his waist,
And whispered with the others; then they drew
The cords still tighter round my limbs, and threw
My unresisting body on the bed
In my own hut hard by. “Mark well,” they said,
“Ere dawn we come. Thy blood be on thy head!”

At first I had no thoughts, nought but the sense
Of cramped and swelling limbs, and an intense
Desire to burst my bonds. But by-and-by
A sense of infinite calamity
Began to weigh upon me; and at last,
The sense came home that time was slipping fast,
That I was there to make an awful choice
’Twixt Life and Death; and then an inner voice
Began to state the argument each way,
Not clearly, coldly, as I may to-day
Do in this letter, but confused, close-pressed,
Repeated and repeated in my breast
In every shape, until my weary brain,
Exhausted by the conflict and the pain,
Yielded to sleep. And even in my sleep
The struggle still went on; I felt it keep
Possession of my dreams, and take the shape
Of shifting nightmare, leaving no escape.
I saw the glorious Pallas, calm no more,
But threatening and terrific, kneeling o’er
My prostrate body, with red eyes that gleamed
So fiery in the darkness, that it seemed
As if one of the Furies had put on
Her golden panoply. Then, wild and wan,
I saw the face of Strongclyffe looming out
From a black whirling gulf; and heard him shout
Like some spent swimmer half sucked down.
And there
I think I woke, and with a vague despair
Resumed the pleadings of each adverse side;
While, ever louder, something in me cried:
“Choose death, choose death! in fifty years from this,
When thou art swallowed in the dark abyss
Of Time, what will it be to thee or thine
Whether thou diedst to-day at twenty-nine,
Or knew’st old age? But man whom Time devours
Not, and who lives by centuries, not hours,
Will be possessed of one transcendent gift,
To add to his small store of things that lift
The soul to higher spheres--a gift from which
Will flow perennial charm for poor and rich,
For young and old. If but mankind could know
That some great treasure lost long, long ago--
A famed Greek play, for instance--had been lost
Because a certain man had grudged the cost
Of his brief life to save it, that man’s name,
For ever handed down in scorn and shame,
Would be all nations’ by-word. Who can say
That some great work which man enjoys to-day--
The Melos statue, Hamlet or Macbeth,
Or the Gioconda--was not saved from death,
In some great unknown peril that it ran,
By some unknown, unthanked and nameless man
Who gave his life instead? And then, in place
Of something rarer yet, wouldst have the face
To give the world thy mean half-wasted life
With which it can do nought? Thou hast no wife,
No child to need thy care. Choose death, choose death,
While yet ’tis time!”

But oh the pleasant breath
Of life; the strong, strong stream of youth and health
That bounds along the veins; the unused wealth
Of what we call the Future, with its schemes,
Emotions, friendships, loves, surprises, dreams;
The thing we call Identity, the I
To which the wretched cling, they know not why,
And which no evils press me to destroy;
The simple pleasures which I now enjoy--
What, give up all? What right has Fate, what right,
To thrust me from Life’s hearth into the night,
The darkness and the cold? What right or need
Has Fate to come, and while I sit and read
Life’s pleasant page, to summon me to shut
The open book, and leave two thirds uncut?
Who dares to tell me that a living man
Whom God has made, who feels the cool winds fan
His heated brow, is not in God’s sight worth
A thing that is man’s work, upon this earth?
My life is mended now; each passing day
Now rolls, though idly, harmlessly away.
The bright green fields, the flowers and the trees,
The rippling streams, the sun, the passing breeze,
The million things that in their life rejoice
And gladden mine, call out with mighty voice,
“Choose life, choose life!”

And when at dawn they came,
And bade me show the spot--O shame! O shame!
I nodded an assent. Oh let me now,
With shame’s familiar brand upon my brow,
For once spare my base self, and hurry by
Those monstrous minutes! Slowly, silently,
I led them to the spot. I saw their eyes
With excusable rapture scan the prize
To which their souls were dead. I saw them take
Their hatchets in their impious hands, and break
Into small fragments hideous to behold,
And shapeless dust of ivory and of gold,
The beauty which the world would have despaired
To match, and twenty centuries had spared
In vain--in vain! Awhile, I think, I heard
Ferocious wrangling, oath and threatening word
Over the booty; but my sickened brain
Took little note. And when I sought again
To see and hear and think, all sounds had ceased;
I was alone, and free.

And--O mean beast,
Mean coward that I was!--I dared not face
The sight of Strongclyffe; but I fled the place,
Leaving a letter; and in guilt and fear,
Just like a thief, stole back to England here,
Alone with my incomparable debt.
He never saw me more; although we met
In these o’er-crowded London streets one day,
And oh how changed he was--how old and grey
He had become, though scarce two years had passed
Over his head since I had seen him last!
He saw me not, but passed with vacant eye;
While I, as if to vanish bodily
Into the solid stones, shrank to the wall.
He now is dead--and I? Oh, does not all
Compel me too to die? What have I done,
In these ten years of anguish, to atone
For having chosen life? What use--what good
Have I been to mankind since first I stood
So fatally and wholly in its debt?
What drops of compensation have I yet
Wrung out of my weak worthless self, and cast
Into the deep abyss? Oh, I have passed
A cruel, cruel time! And year by year
I feel less wish to live, less strength to bear
The weight of my immense insolvency.
And in the street as each man passes by
I mutter to myself, “If he but knew
What he has lost, would he not stop and sue
For what can ne’er be paid, and cry, ‘Come forth!
And show thyself to men, what thou art worth!
Thou art the thing which men have got instead
Of the Incomparable: raise thy head!’”

IPSISSIMUS.

Thou Priest that art behind the screen
Of this confessional, give ear:
I need God’s help, for I have seen
What turns my vitals limp with fear.
O Christ, O Christ, I must have done
More mortal sin than anyone
Who says his prayers in Venice here!

And yet by stealth I only tried
To kill my enemy, God knows;
And who on earth has e’er denied
A man the right to kill his foes?
He won the race of the Gondoliers;
I hate him and the skin he wears--
I hate him and the shade he throws.

I hate him through each day and hour;
All ills that curse me seem his fault:
He makes my daily soup taste sour,
He makes my daily bread taste salt;
And so I hung upon his track
At dusk to stab him in the back
In some lone street or archway vault.

But oh give heed! As I was stealing
Upon his heels, with knife grasped tight,
There crept across my soul a feeling
That I myself was kept in sight;
Each time I turned, dodge as I would,
A masked and unknown watcher stood
Who baffled all my plan that night.

What mask is this, I thought and thought,
Who dogs me thus when least I care?
His figure is nor tall nor short,
And yet has a familiar air.
But oh, despite this watcher’s eye,
I’ll reach my man yet by-and-by,
And snuff his life out yet, elsewhere.

And though compelled to still defer,
I schemed another project soon;
I armed my boat with a hidden spur
To run him down in the lagoon.
At dusk I saw him row one day
Where lone and wide the waters lay,
Reflecting scarce the dim white moon.

No boat, as far as sight could strain,
Loomed on the solitary sea;
I saw my oar each minute gain
Upon my death-doomed enemy,
When lo, a black-masked gondolier,
Silent and spectre-like, drew near,
And stepped between my deed and me.

He seemed from out the flood to rise,
And hovered near to mar my game;
I knew him and his cursed guise,
His cursed mask: he was the same.
So, balked once more, enraged and cowed,
Back through the still lagoon I rowed
In mingled wonder, wrath, and shame.

Oh, were I not to come and pray
Thee for thy absolution here
In the Confessional, to-day
My very ribs would burst with fear.
Leave not, good Father, in the lurch
A faithful son of Mother Church,
Whose faith is firm and soul sincere.

Behind St. Luke’s, as the dead men know,
A pale apothecary dwells,
Who deals in death both quick and slow,
And baleful philters, withering spells;
He sells alike to rich and poor,
Who know what knocks to give his door,
The yellow dust that rings the knells.

Well, then, I went and knocked the knock
With cautious hand, as I’d been taught;
The door revolved with silent lock,
And I went in, suspecting nought.
But oh, the self-same form stood masked
Behind the counter, and unasked
In silence proffered what I sought.

My knees and hands like aspens shook:
I spilt the powder on the ground;
I dared not turn, I dared not look;
My palsied tongue would make no sound.
Then through the door I fled at last
With feet that seemed more slow than fast,
And dared not even once look round.

And yet I am an honest man
Who only sought to kill his foe:
Could I sit down to see each plan
That I took up frustrated so,
When as each plan was marred and balked,
And in the sun my man still walked,
I felt my hate still greater grow?

I thought, “At dusk with stealthy tread
I’ll seek his dwelling, and I’ll creep
Upstairs and hide beneath his bed,
And in the night I’ll strike him deep.”
And so I went; but at his door
The figure, masked just as before,
Sat on the step as if asleep.

Bent, spite all fear, upon my task,
I tried to pass: there was no space.
Then rage prevailed; I snatched the mask
From off the baffling figure’s face,
And oh, unutterable dread!
The face was mine, mine white and dead,
Stiff with some frightful death’s grimace.

What sins are mine, O luckless wight,
That doom should play me such a trick
And make me see a sudden sight
That turns both soul and body sick?
Stretch out thy hands, thou priest unseen
That sittest there behind the screen,
And give me absolution, quick!

O God, O God, his hands are dead!
His hands are mine, O monstrous spell!
I feel them clammy on my head.
Is he my own dead self as well?
Those hands are mine--their scars, their shape:
O God, O God, there’s no escape,
And seeking Heaven, I fall on Hell!

AN ODE TO THE TRAVELLING THUNDER.

(Suggested by a line in the magnificent opening description of Miss A. MARY F. ROBINSON’S “Janet Fisher.”)

God’s wrath is travelling overhead,
God’s wrath upon the wing,
Which makes man cower in his bed
If he has heaven’s strength to dread,
And hides some guilty thing.

The booming peals of thunder shake
These walls and the black night;
They make the mountains thrill and quake:
I listen as I lie awake,
While Earth and Heaven fight.

What seek’st thou with repeated stroke,
Wrath, as thou hurriest past?
Is it, through night’s scorched riven cloak,
Some huge old solitary oak
Or some doomed storm-bent mast?

The mountains court thy blow and each
Unfathomable abyss,
Where thy white blasting stroke may reach
Some Titan still unstruck whose speech
Is the wild torrent’s hiss.

There mayst thou, where presumptuous pines
To climb God’s sky aspire,
Do battle ’gainst their serried lines,
And ere the lurid storm-dawn shines,
Strike dead their kings with fire.

There may thy peal, enclosed by rock,
Long struggle and die slow;
And while it seeks some gorge’s lock,
Growl, laugh and roar, and fiercely mock
Each sound of human woe.

Along the backs of the mountain chain
Where thou awhile mayst cling,
O’er the boundless sea and the endless plain,
With driven hail and sheeted rain
Thick shaken from thy wing,
Thou hurriest on, black cloud of wrath,
Thou hater of human walls,
Shaking men’s souls upon thy path
As thou dost shake the beams, like lath,
In battlemented halls;

Or pausing, broodest o’er the night,
In silence gathering strength;
While, ever and anon, the light
Quivers from out thee, dazzling bright,
And shows earth’s breadth and length.

So have I seen thee, dreaded Power,
Show Venice in her sleep
More vivid than at noon’s fierce hour,
With every palace, dome, and tower
That rises from the deep;

Tinting the briny city pink,
In one long quivering flash;
Then snatching back, ere you could think,
All into darkness black as ink--
Dumb save the ceaseless plash.

Then on, and on, black cloud of fire,
Upon thy stormy ways,
To vault the shaken sky with ire,
To shatter the presumptuous spire,
To make the forest blaze.

To roll in folds of lurid steam
O’er ocean’s rolling waves,
With rolling peals of sound that seem
To ask account for the dead that teem
In all its oozy caves.

By sea or land, by night or day,
Thy savage booming voice
Makes, as thou hurriest on thy way,
And all earth’s shaken pillars sway,
My awe-struck soul rejoice.

Even as stormy passions here,
Battling with God above,
Revenge and wrath, despair and fear,
Make glorious music to my ear,
Beyond all songs of love.

SONNETS.

IDLE CHARON.

The shores of Styx are lone for evermore,
And not one shadowy form upon the steep
Looms through the dusk, far as the eye can sweep,
To call the ferry over as of yore;
But tintless rushes all about the shore
Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep,
Hoar-bearded Charon lies; while pale weeds creep
With tightening grasp all round the unused oar.
For in the world of Life strange rumours run
That now the Soul departs not with the breath,
But that the Body and the Soul are one;
And in the loved one’s mouth, now, after death,
The widow puts no obol, nor the son,
To pay the ferry in the world beneath.

THE OBOL.[A]

Scarce have I rhymed of Charon looming grey
Amid pale rushes through the dusky air,
And of the obol we no longer care
To put in dead men’s mouths as ferry-pay,
When, lo, I find, amongst some pence, to-day
Received as common change, I know not where,
A stray Greek obol, seeming Charon’s fare
To put between my lips when I be dead.
Poor bastard Obol, even couldst thou cheat
The shadowy Boatman, I should scarcely find
The heart to cross: extinction seems so sweet.
I need thee not; and thou shalt be consigned
To some old whining beggar in the street,
Whose soul shall cross, while mine shall stay behind.

[A] The coin referred to in this sonnet was a modern Greek piece of five lepta, rather smaller than a halfpenny, and bearing the word _Obolos_ on the reverse.

LETHE.

I had a dream of Lethe, of the brink
Of leaden waters, whither many bore
Dead, pallid loves, while others, old and sore,
Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink.
And, having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink
Their load of love or guilt for evermore,
Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore
That lay beyond, no more to think and think.

Oh, who will give me, chained to Thought’s dull strand,
A draught of Lethe, salt with final tears,
Were it no more than fills the hollow hand?
Oh, who will rid me of the wasted years,
The thought of Life’s fair structure vainly planned,
And each false hope, that mocking re-appears?

ACHERON.

Where rolls in silent speed through cave on cave
Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light
Evokes the rocks from an eternal night
Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave,
Shall men not meet, and have one chance to crave
Forgiveness for rash deeds--one chance to right
Old earthly quarrels, and in Death’s despite
Unsay the said, and kill the pang they gave?

See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled bark
That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face,
And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms.
But heeding not, they whirl into the dark,
Bound for a sea beyond all time and space,
Which neither life nor love nor sunlight warms.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.

I saw a vast bare plain; with, overhead,
A half-chilled sun, that shed a sickly light;
And all around, till out of reach of sight,
The earth’s thin crust heaved with the rising dead,
Who, as they struggled from their dusty bed,
At first mere bones, by countless years made white,
Took gradual flesh, and stood all huddled tight
In mute, dull groups, as yet too numb to dread.
And all the while the summoning trump on high
With rolling thunder never ceased to shake
The livid vault of that unclouded sky,
Calling fresh hosts of penitents to take
Each his identity; until well-nigh
The whole dry worn-out earth appeared to wake.

ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE BINDING OF THE LOST.

In boundless caves, lit only by the glare
Of pools of molten stone, the lost are pent
In countless herds, inextricably blent,
Yet each alone with his own black despair;
While, through the thickness of the lurid air,
The bat-winged fiends, from some far, unseen vent,
Bring on their backs the damned in swift descent,
To swell the crowds that wait in silence there.

And then begins the binding of the lost
With snaky thongs, before they be transferred
To realms of utter flame or utter frost;
And, like a sudden ocean boom, is heard,
Uprising from the dim and countless host,
Pain’s first vague roar, Hell’s first wild useless word.

MUSSET’S LOUIS D’OR.

Asleep, a little fisher-girl one day
Lay on the sands, within an old boat’s shade;
Her skirt was tattered, and the sea-breeze played
With her brown loosened hair a ceaseless play.
A poet chanced to pass as there she lay;
Her sun-burnt face, her tatters he surveyed;
A golden coin between her lips he laid,
And, letting her sleep on, he went his way.

What came of that gold windfall? Did it breed
Those long-loved coins which patient thrift can show
With proud pure smile to meet the household need?
Or stolen gold? or those curst coins which grow
Each year more sought, more loathed, and are the meed
Of women’s loveless kisses? Who can know?

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

We touch Life’s shore as swimmers from a wreck
Who shudder at the cheerless land they reach,
And find their comrades gathered on the beach
Watching a fading sail, a small white speck--
The phantom ship, upon whose ample deck
There seemed awhile a homeward place for each.
The crowd still wring their hands and still beseech,
But see, it fades, in spite of prayer and beck.

Let those who hope for brighter shores no more
Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek
What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore.
The strong must build stout cabins for the weak;
Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store;
For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak.

SPRING.

For those who note the fate of earthly things
There lurks a sadness in the April air,
A dreamy sense of what the future brings
To things too good, too hopeful, and too fair.
The spring brings greenness to the recent grave,
But brings no solace to the mourning heart;
Nor will its rustling and its piping save
A single pang to him who must depart.
The ivy bloom is full of humming bees;
The linnets whistle in the leaves on high;
Around the stems of all the orchard trees
In flaky heaps the fallen blossoms lie:
But every leaf upon each new-clad tree
Tells but of boundless mutability.

TO V. P.,

ABOUT TO VISIT OXFORD.

So you will see what I can see no more:
The broad quadrangles where the sunlit sward,
At which you peep through some old oaken door,
Is girt around by stone-work black and scarred;
The sedgy Isis, which the swift Eight cleaves
With mighty stroke, all rippled by the breeze;
The narrow Cherwell, gliding under leaves;
The City’s towers rising o’er the trees.
All this, alas, for me is fading fast,
And dimness seems descending on those walls
While Cherwell slowly glides into the Past.
The throng in cap and gown which filled those halls
Is turning into ghosts, whose names at last
I shall forget, as twilight round me falls.

BY THE FIRE.

I sat beside the fire, ten years ago,
And in the dusk wreathed fancies in its flare,
Meting the Future out, to each his share,
While danced the restless shadows to and fro.
And when at last the yellow flame grew low
And leapt and licked no more, I still sat there
Watching with eyes fast fixed, but mind elsewhere
The darkening crimson of the flameless glow.

And lo, at dusk, I watch once more to-day
The slowly-sinking flame, the faint dull crash
Of crumbling embers deadening into grey;
But see alone the Past, misspent and rash,
And wasted gifts, and chances thrown away.
The Present and the Future? All is ash.

NIGHT.

Thou heedest not, inexorable Night,
Whether besought from some lone prison cell
To stay thy hours, by one whose scaffold-knell
Will sound not later than return of light,
Or prayed to urge them by some suffering wight
Who notes their creep as wearily and well
As men not for eternity in Hell
May note the purging flames’ decreasing height.

Hark! in the street I hear a distant sound
Of music and of laughter and of song,
As go a band of revellers their round:
And under prison-walls it comes along,
And under dull sick-rooms, where moans abound;
For who shall grudge their strumming to the strong?

RIVER BABBLE.

The wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase
Away despair from each untasted day,
And, on my soul, I pray of Time to stay
His hand, when I be dead, and not efface.
Yet would I tear them all, could that replace
The fly-rod in my hand, this day of May,
And watch unmoved their fragments float away
Into oblivion, on a trout-stream’s face.

Alas, thou fool! thou weary, crippled fool!
Thou never more wilt leap from stone to stone,
Where rise the trout in every rocky pool!
Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone
Girt round by gurgling waters, in the cool,
While dance the flies, and make the trout thy own!

SUNKEN GOLD.

In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships,
While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell
Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell
With Love’s gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips.
And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,
Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,
And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.

So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,
Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,
In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes.
They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold
In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,
The gleam of irrecoverable gold.

ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.

From out the depths of crocus-coloured morn
With rush of wings the strong Archangel came
And glistening spear; and leapt as leaps a flame
On Satan unprepared and earthward borne;
And rolled the sunless Rebel, bruised and torn,
Upon the earth’s bare plain, in dust and shame,
Holding awhile his spear’s suspended aim
Above the humbled head in radiant scorn.
So leaps within the soul on Wrong or Lust
The warrior Angel whom we deem not near,
And rolls the rebel impulse in the dust,
Scathing its neck with his triumphal tread,
And holding high his bright coercing spear
Above its inexterminable head.

ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS,

FOUND AT TRIPOLI VECCHIO, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE.

One day in the world’s youth, long, long ago,
Before the golden hair of Time grew grey,
The bright warm sea, scarce stirred by the dolphins’ play,
Was swept by sudden music soft and low;
And rippling, as ’neath kisses, parted slow,
And gave a new and dripping goddess birth,
Who brought transcendent loveliness on earth,
With limbs more pure than sunset-tinted snow.
And lo, that self-same sea has now upthrown
A mutilated Venus, rolled and rolled
For ages by the surf, and that has grown
More soft, more chaste, more lovely than of old,
With every line made vague, so that the stone
Seems seen as through a veil which ages hold.

ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.

I.

What stony, bloodless Judith hast thou made,
Mantegna? Draped in many a stony fold,
What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold
A stony head and an unbloody blade?
In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid
To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold
In open street, and paint the heads that rolled
Beneath the axe, in every square displayed?
No, no; not such was Judith, on the night
When, in the silent camp, she watched alone,
Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light
Her sleeping prey; nor, when her deed was done,
She seized the head, and with intent delight
Stared in a face as quivering as her own.